Death Echo

said, “so we sent them some embryonic currency.”
    â€œWhat—” Mac began.
    â€œYou gave them printing plates?” Emma cut in, startled.
    Harrow nodded. “They were old. Not good for more than a few hundred passes before they would be too worn to use.”
    Emma waited, listening very carefully to what Harrow said. Or more important, what he didn’t say.
    He stopped talking.
    â€œWho were your dollar allies?” Mac asked.
    â€œGeorgia. The Ukraine. A few of the ‘-istan’ governments.”
    â€œSo you were bankrolling insurrections,” Emma said.
    â€œCan we help it if a few old printing plates go missing?” Harrow asked, shrugging. “It was years ago. Shit happens.”
    â€œFascinating and all that,” Emma said, “but what does it have to do with Blackbird ?”
    â€œThe op went south. Russia got hold of the plates and began minting new hundreds. A lot of them.”
    â€œWhere did they get the good paper to go with the plates?” Mac asked.
    â€œSame place they get truckloads of blank passports,” Harrow said. “They hijacked what they needed. Now they’re trying to smuggle tens of millions into the U.S. to leverage some financial deal that will at best break a few hedge funds and at worst drag the economy into another Great Recession. If that happens, the party that doesn’t believe in war anywhere will be in control, which would please the hell out of our enemies.”
    â€œOur economy eats billions and looks around for a real meal,” Mac said. “What good is a few million?”
    â€œSpoken like a true warrior,” Harrow said. “You flunked advanced economic manipulation, didn’t you? A few hundred million can be a lot of leverage, but I don’t have time to explain calculus to a kindergartener. All I want is Blackbird . Here. Now.”
    Mac and Emma looked at each other.
    â€œKeep talking,” Emma said. “I’m having trouble envisioning a multimillion-dollar yacht being used to smuggle currency.”
    â€œAbkhazia,” Harrow said in a clipped voice.
    â€œSuspicious tribes, clans, and gangs,” Mac said. “Fallout of the FSU. Criminal Central for Middle Europe. Specialty, counterfeiting. Pounds, euros, dollars, whatever sells. And they’re good at what they do. Very good. They damn near put Lithuania’s economy under. It’s war without firing a shot.”
    Harrow studied Mac, then nodded. “Your file didn’t mention that you spent time there.”
    â€œSpent time where,” Mac said without inflection.
    Harrow nodded again. “Warlords, mafiya chieftains, and the bitter ends of corrupt bureaucracies all got together to act like governments and get rich fleecing the peaceful, stoic, or stupid. No matter how you look at it, Russia ‘taxes’ or runs most of the various criminal enterprises within the Russian Federation.”
    â€œCrime is where the money is,” Emma said.
    â€œExactly,” Harrow said. “Our best estimate is that the Russians either have taken over or are in a power struggle with the Middle Europeans over the hundred million dollars that is somehow connected to Blackbird . This isn’t the first load they’ve run into the U.S.,” he admitted. “It’s just the first one we’ve found out about in time to do something.”
    â€œA hundred million bucks at a crack,” Mac said. “Even in hundred-dollar bills, that’s a big pile of green.”
    â€œA million C-notes,” Emma said, doing the math in her head. “That’s a hundred thousand bundles of a hundred bills each.”
    Mac smiled slowly at her, then said to Harrow, “I’ve been all over Blackbird looking for your damn bugs. I didn’t see a good place to hide that much paper.”
    â€œFuel tank,” Harrow said.
    â€œThose bills are going to stink of diesel,” Mac said. “Hard to pass skunky bills.”
    â€œNot if you build a sealed trap to hide the money inside the tanks,” Harrow said.
    Emma didn’t know about fuel tank dimensions, but she did know about stacks of currency. She’d used a few suitcases of payoff money in her time.
    â€œSo,” she said, “the Agency says Blackbird is the mule of choice for a currency-smuggling gig.”
    â€œThat’s what we believe, ” Harrow said. “Dollars may not be as sexy as diamonds,